


have you any dreams you'd like to sell

by redledgers



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Gen, Resentment, the deck of many things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 20:33:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9842642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/pseuds/redledgers
Summary: The Deck of Many Things calls to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CorvidFeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/gifts).



> thanks to corvidfeathers for putting this idea in my head a few weeks ago i wish you never had
> 
> title from Dreams by Gabrielle Aplin

The deck is thick between his fingers, cards shifting in the leather pouch as he shakes it lightly once, twice, assessing the weight of them. With careful precision, he runs a finger against the edge of the deck before selecting one card. If not for a burning curiosity eating at him, wearing him thin, he would have left the leather package safely tucked among her things. But he would always be a man of chance.

Choosing from the middle seems too obvious, so he goes for the bottom quarter and gingerly slips a card out. Percy is a lucky man, that much has been obvious from his continued existence, from the casino in Ank’harel. He spins the gilded card in his palm before flipping it over. Staring back at him is a handsome fellow, leaned up against a spade and flipping a dagger. There are records elsewhere, deep in libraries too vast for even him to imagine, records that would tell what his chances are. There are no records that can tell him exactly what would happen—such things would be lost in the winds of time, deemed as fairytales, and so he can only imagine. Before he flips the card over a final time, it glitters and crumbles into ash in his hands. He lets the dust fall to the ground, wipes his palms against his jacket, and carefully slips the pack of cards in among Vex’s things again. Should she notice it moved, he would bluff, but he’s confident she won’t notice a thing.

It’s some time before he brings himself to leave the room, stalking quietly through the halls and wondering exactly what he’s brought upon his home. No angel of death has made its presence known to him, he has no splitting headache, no mysterious weaponry appeared for him. She walks, he brushes his fingertips against the just barely roughened stone walls of the castle. It is solid, present, and he feels eerily at ease. He is a man of chance, but perhaps a trip to the library can clarify _something._  

He’s waylaid before he can even reach the wing the library is in, approached with urgency about a meeting in the war room below the castle, senses _something_ is wrong, but he does not know what. He is the first to arrive, barring Cassandra sitting at the head, feet propped on the table. She wears training clothes and watches him with an even gaze as he takes his place beside her. He would ask what this was about but he knows they’ll get there when the rest of the party arrives; instead he fidgets idly, wondering if this has something (everything) to do with the cards.

Cassandra sits at attention when the group is seated and surveys them all. She looks every bit the lady she’s become even without the formal clothes. Without a word, she raises a finger, a signal of sorts, and a dozen guards step forward with crossbows drawn. There’s protestations, standing, a warning shot, and he feels the (all too familiar) chilled clasp of metal chains on his wrists.

The threads begin to unravel, splitting off different ways and slipping into the tapestries of time, making root as best they can.

In another world, another timeline, she asks him to join her for tea and he goes both out of a sense of obligation and gladness. It is in conversation that she unravels, a bitter thing released from years of holding it close, from years of a new influence, and she is cursing his name, shooting him down with venomous words, brandishing the dagger that has never left her side since Whitestone was returned to the people. It’s a price to pay, he thinks, for tempting fate, for playing his luck, for leaving her behind so many times, and he can do nothing, refuses to do anything as she lunges at him with anger in her eyes, resentment, abandonment, and pure malice. 

In every universe he sees it, every possible way she could: screaming the name of the Briarwoods as invocation for her actions, a true test of her alliance. He wonders if he missed the warning signs, the red flags, anything that would tell him that this would happen, that she would betray them without so much as a blink, but he comes up short, knows this is his fault because it is always his fault when it comes to his sister even if it was an unlucky gamble. The fates don’t take kindly to him, not when it comes to family, and he _knows_ , can’t rip the feeling from his bones, can’t tear it asunder and bury it.

There is nothing about this that breaks the cycle, nothing about the threads that leads anywhere past a cold cell, chains, a dagger through his heart as she stares him down; he wishes she was a coward, wishes she could not look at his face, but she does, she learned it from the best, and he thinks to himself that she’s broken the world, _he’s_ broken the world; there’s no hope for a wish spell, no gods shining favor on him. If the last thing he sees is his family, he will hold that before bolts fly, before the tip of a dagger presses into his flesh.

(The cards turn to dust as time reckons with the damage; they lay untouched, discovered, taken for later as if the new owner has any idea of their significance.)


End file.
